June 29th, 2012: I was reading a book about a family one time, and there was a part where the family was raking up all the leaves in the front yard. They had them all piled up when the youngest kid dove into them and fucked all the piles up. Rather than getting angry, the father, the brother, and the sister instead just started a leaf throwing war then ended in laughter and smiles. The family then had to re-rake the leaves into piles. When they had the leaves bagged up, there was half a bag or so of leaves still scattered about the yard. The kids were bummed because they figured they had to go get all those straggler leaves raked up before they could be done for the day. The father told them not to worry about it, those extra leaves left behind give the yard some character.
The moral is that a good story doesn’t always end up exactly how you think it ought to – that’s character. People who aren’t perfect are more perfect to me because they have character. Hell, even God has character. So anyway, my 100 lbs. in 180 days story, I’ll have to report, did not end perfectly. It had character. I weighed-in today at 252 lbs.
I am proud to say that I practice what I preach, though, about patience and not doing anything drastic and outside of program directives. In other words, I did not take the Watershed pills or do cardio with a sauna suit, or deprive myself of food or liquid, or take laxatives or puke up my food. I let the airplane land where the airplane was gonna land.
June 29th, 2020: Along with patience, the program requires you to allow for character. Character, with regard to scale numbers, means you have to expect there to be a range of values for goal weight if you’re going to plan to assess on a certain day.
The Program asks a lot from you, and it requires discipline, which in turn, requires you to be hard on yourself quite often. Pretty sure I’ve had to take a daily pill of “suck it up” for eight and a half years now. All this doesn’t equate to abusing yourself though, and you have to be able to forgive yourself. You have to forgive and forget – but with the caveat that you’ll promise to yourself that you’ll try and learn from the times you fly off into the rhubarb.
Part 1 of Fat Ass No More ends today. As I wrote in 2012, I did not reach the goal of 100 lbs. in 180 days. I actually lost 101 pounds prior to 180 days, but on the actual 180th day, I was 2 lbs. above, at 252. This is the character I wrote about, and the range of values that you come to expect. It’s science, but you’ll find many places in science that build in a solution “set” rather than an exact number. So while 100 in 180 would’ve been spot on, I’ll take 98 in 180, and remember the line from the book I read about some leftover leaves on the lawn giving it character.
The acceptance of character is a fundamental reason why I’ve been able to accept my weaknesses since I started this war/journey for real in 2012, ultimately hit that goal weight of 189 lbs., and keep the weight off. There’s been too many times that mental illness could have caused me to slide back into the bad habits that led to morbid obesity. However, the acceptance of myself for who I am, and allowing for character, has kept me flexible in life. The flexibility helps when things don’t go just the way I want, which stokes the fire of mental instability, which then leads me to look for something to soothe anxieties – which, for me, is always going to be food.
I learned discipline, patience, and forgiveness from The Program. I learned how to stop the metaphorical bleeding that occurs when a binge starts. I learned the nuts and bolts of how to plan diet and exercise. I learned the value of planning and tracking. I learned tricks to get over, around, or through mental barriers to success. I learned that hours and days can be long, but months and years go quickly. I learned that people who loved you before you start the program will love you during and after (if there is such a thing as after), and that they’ll get over the fact that you can’t sit at a table and stuff yourself every Saturday at the BBQ, or every Sunday at the Sunday dinner, or at any other holiday or special gathering that revolves around food. I learned that you can trust yourself, and that if you do, you can expect to regularly enjoy the sweet taste of daily success in some form. I learned that this is a long, long road, and that even if I declare myself to be done, I’ll never be done. I learned that I have to take liabilities and turn them into assets. I learned that I have to look for simple pleasures, and not dwell on the miles ahead of me, but the inches, and that if I do, the inches rather quickly add up. I learned that, while exhausting, fighting every day is really the only choice, and you know what? It eventually just becomes who you are, and, along with character, that person and that life ain’t so bad. It’s certainly easier than the alternative.
hello, I just watched your video out at atr today. you guys a amazing. You mentioned that you have tried every diet. What have you ended up with as far as meals and foods. and also did you have to have surgery for the extra skin?
Hi Gary – Thank you! I’m glad you liked it. I finally came up with a meal plan that works well for me, and it’s based on just counting calories to around 2500 per day, and then I try to burn off about 500 of that with exercise. There is nothing too crazy about the plan I use – and I pretty much eat the same thing every day, which can get boring. I do change every couple of months, still trying to keep it around 2500 calories. Currently, for breakfast I eat two eggs, for lunch I have a cup of rice, a can of green beans, and 4 oz. of salmon, and then at dinner I have a quesadilla with a ton of salsa, a bag of salad with a box of mushrooms and about 4 tablespoons of Bolthouse dressing in it, a cheeseburger (no condiments), and a pint of Halo Top ice cream. Juliana gets bored eating the same thing, so she counts her calories daily, and very carefully, using a food scale and measuring cups. I never did have surgery, I lost that first 100 lbs. in 6 months, which is pretty quick, but it did leave time for the skin to kind of adjust, and then the other 60 or so took another 8 months. I did have some loose skin for awhile, but small price to pay for sure. I have nothing against that surgery, I just didn’t need it. Hope all this helps. Email me at jbtaktez@msn.com if you want some more information. I’ll be putting out a book this year that will go into detail about all we talked about yesterday.